New book on Traditionalist thought published (coming soon in US)

Mark Sedgwick, Traditionalism: The Radical Project for Restoring Sacred Order is now available in Europe and Canada. Readers in the US will have to wait until July 6. 

Official UK price is £25, but Amazon.co.uk is selling for £22 and £12.99 on Kindle. In Canada, $53.95 and $17.99 Kindle, and in Europe €22.19 and £18.75 Kindle. 

One of the first reviews is in The Scotsman, and says (in part) "This very fine book is a forensic look at the movement and its influence, and has several points where you both realise something and ponder 'why did I never realise that?'” That is rather what I had hoped for.

The book looks at the intellectual foundations of Traditionalism, its application both to various projects, and "post-Traditionalism." Each chapter looks first at the general intellectual background to the issue it discusses, and then at Traditionalist understandings, starting in most cases with René Guénon and ending as much as possible with living Traditionalists.

Forthcoming book on Traditionalist thought

One of the criticisms that have been made of my original Against the Modern World is that I did not pay enough attention to Traditionalist thought. I agree, and therefore a new book will come out in June 2023 focusing on ideas: Traditionalism: The Radical Project for Restoring Sacred Order. The book is a companion to Against the Modern World, not a replacement--it goes over different ground.

The publishers are Oxford University Press in the US (see cover without tree) at $29.95 (pre-order here) and Pelican in the UK (see cover with tree) at £22 or £9.99 on Kindle (pre-order here). Two very different covers, but the text is the same. 

 

The chapters are:

INTRODUCTORY
1. Traditionalism and the Traditionalists  
2. Historical perennialism  
 
PART I: FOUNDATIONS
3. Traditionalist perennialism   
4. Traditionalist history   
5. The Traditionalist critique of modernity   
6. Traditionalism, thought, and society    

PART II: CORE PROJECTS
7. Self-realization    
8. Religion    
9. Politics    

PART III: FURTHER PROJECTS
10. Art    
11. Gender    
12. Nature    
13. Dialogue  
  
PART IV: POST-TRADITIONALISM
14. The radical right   
 
CONCLUDING
15. Conclusion    

Dugin, Evola, 4chan, Arktos (and this blog)

A new collection, Far-Right Revisionism and the End of History: Alt/Histories, edited by Louie Dean Valencia-García (New York: Routledge, 2020) has four chapters of special relevance for those who are interested in Traditionalism.

Chapter 7, “The Extremist Construction of Identity in the Historical Narratives of Alexander Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory” by Charles Robert Sullivan and Amy Fisher-Smith, deals with Dugin and his The Fourth Political Theory (2009), as the title suggests. The chapter argues that The Fourth Political Theory “unfurls three levels of historical narrative.” The first is the Traditionalism of Guénon and Evola, the second is the militancy of Carl Schmitt, and the third is the “other beginning” (andere Anfang) of Heidegger, which is combined with neo-Eurasianism and Orthodox eschatology to produce “a Manichean clash of civilisations, and through the ‘Doppler effect’ of intensifying urgency, a proclamation of the value of war and a program of relegitimated violence.” The chapter is interesting especially for its analysis of Dugin’s use of Schmitt and Heidegger.

Chapter 8, “The Problem of Alt-Right Medievalist White Supremacy, and Its Black Medievalist Answer” by Cord J. Whitaker, deals with the view of the Middle Ages taken by White Supremacists, which is contrasted with the alternative view advanced by writers of the Harlem Renaissance. The view of the Middle Ages of White Supremacists is traced in part to Mussolini and thence to Evola. Whitaker is surely right that “the importance of the Middle Ages in the Alt-Right’s narrative of spiritual knighthood is not lost on the modern movement’s rank and file adherent,” and the myth of medieval chivalry is a powerful one. This perhaps goes close to the heart of the importance of the past for the contemporary right, including perhaps parts of the mainstream right. I fear, however, that Whitaker may be overstating the influence of Evola on Mussolini, who had already romanticized the past for his own purposes before he ever read Evola.

Chapter 15, “Esoteric Fascism Online: 4chan and the Kali Yuga” by Marc Tuters and the Open Intelligence Lab, is one of the most interesting chapters in the book. The Open Intelligence Lab is “an Amsterdam-based collective of interdisciplinary scholars scrutinising online political subcultures” and the chapter uses data produced by a Digital Methods Summer School in Amsterdam, specifically the analysis of 7,000 posts on 4chan/pol/ dating from 2013 to 2019 looking at the use of the key Traditionalist phrase “Kali Yuga.” This produces a diagram of word collocations in which “Evola” occupies a central place as a term that is almost as prominent as “cycle” and “Jews,” the two most prominent terms in the collocation. “Cycle” connects most to “ancient” and “golden,” which is no great surprise, and “Jews” connects to “race,” “Aryan,” and “white,” again no great surprise on 4chan/pol/. What is surprising is the connection between “Kali Yuga” and “Jews” and thus “Aryan,” as for Guénon the Kali Yuga had nothing to do with the Jews.

For Evola, though, there was a connection, and there was an even stronger connection for Miguel Serrano, the Chilean exponent of “esoteric Nazism” who drew on (and on certain points disagreed with) Evola. Tuters is therefore right to point to Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke’s work on what Tuters calls “esoteric fascism” (Goodrick-Clarke used Serrano’s term). He is right to see “chan culture” as “giving a contemporary ‘vernacular’ form” to this, and he is probably mostly right that “for the anonymous Evolites in discussion on /pol/, the Kali Yuga does not signify a decline for all humanity, but rather a failure of ‘The West’ to preserve its own roots and identitarian history.” And, as we know from other studies, “chan culture” spreads into general online culture, and hence general culture.

Tuters’s chapter demonstrates the impact of Evola, via esoteric fascism and chan culture, on the general culture. This is in itself fascinating. It is also fascinating, methodologically, to see how he did this. Perhaps we all need to attend Digital Methods Summer Schools.

Three other gems from this chapter: (1) the general impression of the importance of chan culture for Brenton Tarrant overstates this influence; (2) the posts analyzed by Tuters at one point showed equal enthusiasm for Hitler and Donald Trump; and (3) “taking the red pill” “refers [to] an esoteric experience of awakening.”

Finally, chapter 16, “The Rise and Fall of the Far Right in the Digital Age” by Louie Dean Valencia-García deals with Arktos Media, the publishers who have done so much to distribute the works of Evola. Arktos is, as Valencia-García argues, “one the largest dealers of alt-histories in the world today,” and is also “a nexus between Russian Nationalism, the European New Right and the American Alt-Right.” By “Russian Nationalism” Valencia-García really means Dugin. Arktos is also important for Generation Identity. The chapter deals primarily with the activities and connections of people currently or formerly involved with Arktos, not with Evola as such, though it does look at the extent to which Evola and the other currents promoted by Arktos may be considered “fascist.”

The chapter also deals with this blog, which is described as “a sort of node connecting scholars of traditionalism and traditionalist activists.” This may indeed be one of the many things that this blog does, but it is far from being its primary purpose. In this context, Valencia-García says in a footnote “As presented on the blog, the relationship between Sedgwick [the manager of this blog] and the far-right is ambiguous at best.” Valencia-García was kind enough to explain to me [Sedgwick] in an email that he was not referring to any actual relationship with the far right, about which he knew nothing, but to the way in which I sometimes respond to comments posted on the blog by known far-right activists, which he thought “might be considered by some as a friendly back and forth.” “Rather than describing that dialogue as friendly,” continued Valencia-García, “I thought a more fair descriptor would be ‘ambiguous.’” For the sake of clarification—and to avoid all ambiguity—I should note that my intention in responding to comments is always to be polite, not friendly, and that I hope I am polite to all who post comments on this blog, the vast majority of whom are not connected in any way to the far right.

Finally, the chapter also discusses Jacob Senholt, who was one of the two co-founders of Integral Tradition Publishing, the company that grew into Arktos. Senholt is a Dane who did his BA, MA, and PhD at Aarhus University, where I teach, and I co-supervised his PhD dissertation, as Valencia-García points out. Again, some clarification is in order. When I agreed to be one of Senholt’s supervisors, I did not know of his involvement with Integral Tradition Publishing, but it did not come as a total surprise to me to read of it in Valencia-García’s chapter, as I had heard rumors about what Senholt’s political views (once?) were. In fact, I already had some idea of what his views might be when I agreed to be one of his supervisors, and therefore had to decide whether or not I should agree to supervise him. My view was that as an employee of a public university it was not appropriate for me to discriminate between students, including PhD students, on any basis—not their religious beliefs, gender identify, sexual orientation, and not their political convictions either. I never discussed Senholt’s political convictions with him, only his academic work, and I believe that was the proper course of action to take.

In all, a good book, especially chapter 15.

Perennialism, hyperdiffusionism, and the end of the Kali Yuga in 2012

An interesting short article in Nova Religio contrasts perennialism and “hyperdiffusionism” in the context of understandings of the monuments left by vanished civilizations such as the Mayan and the Pharaonic. It is “The Highest Common Factor: Heterodox Archaeology and the Perennialist Milieu” by Kevin A. Whitesides, Nova Religio 22, no. 4 (May 2019): 27-43.

The term “hyperdiffusionism” was probably coined by Glyn Daniel in 1963, and denotes the widespread idea that contemporary human cultures all share a common origin in an earlier grand civilization. The difference between hyperdiffusionism and perennialism, Whiteside says, is that a hyperdiffusionist needs to show some sort of physical transmission, while a perennialist does not, as for a perennialist metaphysical knowledge is in some sense innate.

Whitesides gives three examples of approaches to ancient monuments and their civilizaitons. One, that of Augustus Le Plongeon (1826-1908), was purely hyperdiffusionist, arguing for a Mayan origin for all human wisdom and culture. Another, that of John Major Jenkins (1964-2017), was purely perennialist, arguing that the Mayans “independently tapped into the same doctrines also found in ancient Vedic and Egyptian cosmology.” A third, that of R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz (1887-1961) mixed both hyperdiffusionism and perennialism in his interpretation of Pharaonic monuments.

The contrast between perennialism and hyperdiffusionism is an interesting one, as the case of Schwaller de Lubicz is not unique: while the two understandings are logically distinct, they can easily be combined, and perennialism often contains traces of hyperdiffusionism.

Jenkins himself is also interesting. He is best known for his part in promoting the idea, widespread during 2011 and 2012, that 21 December 2012 would have major eschatological significance—an idea that apparently helped boost sales of private underground blast shelters in the US. Jenkins based his arguemnts mostly on the Mayan calendar and the idea of “galactic alignment,” but he also drew on Ananda Coomaraswamy and René Guénon, identifying 2012 as the end of the Kali Yuga, in Galactic Alignment: The Transformation of Consciousness According to Mayan, Egyptian, and Vedic Traditions (Bear & Company, 2002).

Criticism of Guénon's understanding of Hinduism

Renaud Fabbri has published an unusual critical re-evaluation of the work of René Guénon in its relationship with Hinduism, written from within the Traditionalist perspective. This is René Guénon et la tradition hindoue. Les limites d’un regard (René Guénon and the Hindu tradition: The limits of a view; Lausanne: L’Age d’homme, 2018).

Fabbri knows his Traditionalism well. He is a former editor of a Maryami journal, Vincit Omnia Veritas, and (former?) webmaster of religioperennis.org, a Maryami website. He seems to have distanced himself from the Maryamiyya, however, and is is now director of the Aditi Center for Study of the Hindu Tradition (Centre Aditi d’Etudes sur la Tradition Hindoue) in eastern France, which describes itself as being “within the perspective opened by the work of René Guénon but without being attached to any particular school.” His René Guénon et la tradition hindoue is critical primarily of Guénon, but also of Schuon, noting for example that while Guénon resisted the temptation to see himself as an authoritative figure above the great spiritual authorities whom he interpreted, Schuon did not, with “catastrophic” consequences (p. 69, n. 2).

René Guénon et la tradition hindoue asks to what extent the teachings that Guénon presented as of Hindu origin are actually compatible with that tradition. After an introductory section, “René Guénon: Topicality and Paradox,” Fabbri moves on to “Metaphysics and Non-Duality,” and then to “Tradition and Millenarianism,” where he makes his most serious criticisms. He starts with the primordial tradition, which he argues is not really a Hindu concept, and moves on to the Axial Age, arguing that Guénon’s understanding of transcendence was characteristic of the post-axial. Then comes the Kali Yuga, which Fabbri argues is not, in its Guénonian form, compatible with Hindu understandings. Guénon’s understanding of the Kali Yuga is, in Fabbri’s view, characteristic of the millenarianism of the monotheistic faiths, and quite alien to Hinduism. This section is followed by “The Spiritual Path,” where Fabbri starts with the “Hindu masters” of Guénon, whom he thinks may not have existed except perhaps in some sort of vision, and continues with initiation, Ramana Maharshi, and initiatic work. In the final section, on “Sacred Femininity,” both the views of Guénon and Schuon are considered. Fabbri ends by concluding that Guénon’s work finds its greatest significance today in the Sufi forms that Traditionalism has taken, not in any Hindu forms. Given the major criticisms of Guénon’s understandings of Hinduism that the book has previously made, this is a relatively mild conclusion.

Fabbri’s thoughtful and thought-provoking book is something that is found relatively rarely within the Traditionalist movement: an understanding of the work of Guénon as a historical construct that cannot be accepted in its entirety, but that still contains much of value. Though rare within the Traditionalist movement, this type of understanding is actually the way in which human thought normally develops.

The book is short (136 pages), made up of 18 very short chapters, some no longer than three pages. These are collected into the five sections mentioned above. Unfortunately, the book does not give source references.

The Kali yuga in context

As readers of Guénon well know, the concept of the kali yuga or dark age is central to his thought, and thus to Traditionalism as a whole. An excellent new article on the Hindu origins and European uses of the concept places its development in a wider context. The article is Luis González-Reimann, "The Yugas: Their Importance in India and their Use by Western Intellectuals and Esoteric and New Age Writers," Religion Compass 8 (2014), pp. 357–370.

González-Reimann argues that the concept of the kali yuga is a late one, emerging in India only around the first century AD, when it helped to explain the various disasters then afflicting the classical Vedic system. It became known in Europe during the seventeenth century, but did not attract much attention until the eighteenth century, when Voltaire was among those interested in it, and in the challenge that the system of the yugas presented to established Christian chronology. The intellectual mainstream soon lost interest, however, according to González-Reimann because of the impact of a refutation by Sir William Jones. In fact, I suspect, it was also because chronologies based on geology were then beginning to render all other varieties of chronology obsolete.

Even if the intellectual mainstream lost interest in the yugas, esotericists did not. The yugas featured in the work of Antoine Fabre d'Olivet (1767-1825), who suggested that the Hindus had got them the wrong way round and that the kali yuga was actually the best of the four yugas. They then appear in the work of Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre (1842–1909), who agreed with Fabre d'Olivet that the yugas were actually improving. Helena Blavatsky, Annie Besant and Rudolf Steiner all wrote about the yugas, following Saint-Yves d'Alveydre's optimistic view. Besant emphasized the coming new age of the satya yuga, and Steiner even held that the kali yuga ended in 1899.

Saint-Yves d'Alveydre modified the standard Indian understanding of the yugas, equating the mahāyuga with the manvantara, two measures of time that classically belonged to different systems, and were far from identical. Guénon follows Saint-Yves d'Alveydre in this, which indicates his proximate source. Guénon differed from the esoteric norm, however, and most importantly, in  reverting to the original emphasis on the negative nature of the kali yuga itself. And the rest, as they say, is history. Once again, we see how Traditionalism owes much to mainstream esotericism, but also differs from it.

All this is shown clearly by González-Reimann in his article, which closes by observing that "in the second half of the 20th century, esotericism largely morphed into New Age thinking, or ... the New Age engulfed esotericism. Either way, such ideas [as the yugas] ... have been incorporated into the manifold spectrum of New Age thought." Yes, perhaps, so far as optimistic understandings from Fabre d'Olivet and Saint-Yves d'Alveydre to Besant and Steiner are concerned, but no so far as the Traditionalist understanding is concerned.